Charter schools. The Sarasota County school board renews a charter contract after a contentious debate. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Magnet schools. Two new Pinellas County programs are flooded with applications. Tampa Bay Times.

Testing. The first priority in choosing the state’s next assessment was having it ready for next year, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Tuesday. Gradebook. Field tests from Utah can inform officials about how the new tests will work. WFSU. The new test should be an improvement from the FCAT, theSun-Sentinel editorializes. South Florida schools tweak their testing calendars to accommodate Passover. Miami Herald.

Funding. The House’s budget proposal would boost spending on public schools. Times/Herald.

School safety. Bill aims to make it safer for kids walking to school. Gradebook. Hillsborough Schools hire a new security chief. Tampa Bay Times.

Homework. The load isn’t all that heavy for most students, a Brookings Institution report says. Orlando Sentinel.

Employee conduct. A former Manatee High School assistant principal is in a legal fight for his job. Bradenton Herald. A Brevard County high school teacher is on paid administrative leave after showing students a nude picture, in what was apparently an accident. Florida Today.

A bill that would accelerate the growth of Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program could be headed for a vote on the House floor.

Rep. Michael Bileca

The House Choice and Innovation Subcommittee approved the measure on a party-line vote Tuesday, after approving changes that would raise limits on the program’s growth and voting down a proposal to require that scholarship students take the same standardized tests as their public school peers.

After the changes approved Tuesday, the program could grow to about $401 million next school year, raising the cap for that year by about $43.6 million. That would allow as many as 76,680 students to receive scholarships. (The program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)

The hearing was packed with parents, teachers, students, political activists and clergy members on both sides of the school choice debate. Students weighed in on both sides, including Artayia Wesley, an eighth-grader who said she has used a scholarship to attend St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando since she was in fourth grade.

“Before, I was academically challenged,” she said. “I wasn’t the best student in the class, grade-wise. But as I went to St. Andrew, now I’m an A-B student and working to be on the honor roll.”

Democrats on the committee, who opposed the bill, said they wanted the state to measure for scholarship students’s academic progress with the same standardized tests taken by public-school students. Rep. Shevrin Jones, D-West Park, introduced an amendment to create that requirement. It failed on a party-line vote after setting off a debate about how schools should be held accountable.

Representatives of the Florida Education Association and Florida PTA said they supported Jones’ proposal.

Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, said the proposal would be confined to “a very small population of our students” with conditions like spina bifida and cerebral palsy, which would qualify them for a high level of accommodations in the public school system.

“It’s just very difficult for our system to meet all their needs,” she said during the Senate Education Committee hearing. “This gives them another option for their parents to decide the best approach to get their child the best education.”

Several public school teachers spoke against the bill. Joy Jackson, a teacher at Robert Renick Educational Center in Miami-Dade County, said the program could compete for scarce resources with the accommodations made by school districts.

“This is currently a very small population, but if history with these programs has shown us anything, it is that as soon as these programs are made available, they become quite large, quite fast,” said Lynda Russell of the Florida Education Association.

The bill received support in previous hearings from parents who educate their special-needs children at home. They were joined Tuesday by Elias Seife, a Miami-Dade parent who said his daughter has received “excellent support” in the public school system.Continue Reading →

Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Monday she has selected the non-profit group American Institutes for Research to design the state’s new tests for public schools, the final step in an effort to tamp down grassroots anger over learning standards.

The $220 million contract with AIR will run for six years and will be cheaper than it would have been to go forward with a test developed by a multi-state consortium that Gov. Rick Scott ordered Stewart to back away from last year, according to the Department of Education.

“I feel very confident that it is the best choice for Florida students,” Stewart said in a conference call with reporters.

Scott’s decision last year to distance the state from the consortium — the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC — was part of an executive order meant to assuage largely conservative activists worried about the Common Core State Standards.

The Common Core standards, adopted by about four dozen states, were tweaked by the State Board of Education last month. Officials have begun referring to the revised version as the “Florida Standards.”

But AIR and another company that will work with it on the Florida tests, Data Recognition Corporation, have also helped to develop the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Like PARCC, that test is being put together by a multi-state consortium that hopes to use it to measure student learning under Common Core.

A key player in legislation to expand school choice scholarships in Florida said Monday he will fight to keep scholarship students from having to take the same standardized tests as their public school counterparts.

The comments from state Rep. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, are squarely at odds with calls for a same-test mandate by Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, and suggest positions may be hardening over a critical potential piece of the legislation.

“I do want to see any mandates to require the state test,” Diaz, who is shepherding the bill for House Speaker Will Weatherford, said during a live chat with redefinED.

“I plan to fight to keep away from any mandate of state testing that would stymy innovation at these schools,” he continued. “Since there is no current new state test in Florida this would be a mistake. I believe that as we work this (through) the process we will find a solution that will show this program has accountability without placing it in a one-size-fits-all box.”

Diaz’s comments came on the eve of the bill’s hearing Tuesday in the House Choice & Innovation Subcommittee. So far, no testing language has surfaced with the House bill or its Senate counterpart, but Gaetz has indicated that additional testing requirements are a priority. Currently, tax credit scholarship students are required to take state-approved, norm-referenced tests in reading and math, but not the same tests taken by public school students.

Also during the chat, Diaz said he believed the bill will still earn some bipartisan support, as similar legislation has in recent years. No Democrats voted in favor of the bill during its first stop two weeks ago in the House Finance & Taxation Subcommittee. Continue Reading →

Four years from now, Florida school districts will be expected to have a computer or tablet for every student in their classrooms, allowing digital devices to replace many of their paper worksheets and cardboard-bound textbooks.

The districts reported in surveys taken last semester that 70 percent of their classrooms meet the state’s wireless specifications, and they offer students more than 918,000 desktop computers, tablets and laptops that meet the state’s specifications. That’s more than one device for every three students enrolled in Florida public schools.

But a closer look at the survey results shows wide variation from one school district to another, and sometimes between schools in the same district. Ten districts reported student-to-computer ratios below 2-to-1, outpacing the goals laid out in the Florida Department of Education’s strategic plan. At the same time, half a dozen reported student-to-computer ratios higher than 5-to-1. (The ratios do not include computers that fall short of the specifications set by the state. See the full surveys here, and a compilation of self-reported student-to-computer ratios here).

State Sen. John Legg, R-Trinity, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said the survey data has limitations. He likened the surveys to someone placing their hand in a pool of water to test whether it was hot or cold. They help officials take the “temperature” of school districts around the state. But the data on the number of devices or the strength of their broadband connections may be imprecise because it is self-reported. It also might not tell the whole story about whether school districts are prepared to make the shift to digital instruction.

“You can have devices and no infrastructure,” Legg said. “You can have devices and infrastructure, but no professional development, and no content.”

He is sponsoring legislation intended to give officials a clearer picture. SB 790 would earmark about $100 million for technology funding. But the state board would have to approve a detailed technology plan that ties the growth of digital learning to improving student achievement. Before they receive the money, school districts would have to submit a plan to the state explaining their plans for training teachers and improving student results.

Tax-credit scholarships. Some fear Step Up For Students could become a “taxpayer-financed monopoly” as the cap on tax-credit contributions increases, bringing in more money under the 3 percent administrative allowance used to run the program. Palm Beach Post.Jason Bedrick of CATO responds to a Miami Herald editorial that opposed legislation expanding the program. The legislation has prompted a back-and-forth between state Rep. Ritch Workman and his local school board. Florida Today.The Heartland Institute writes up the bill, while Watchdog.org looks at the testing question. (Step Up administers the program and co-hosts this blog.)

Open enrollment. Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti’s plan to have district-wide open enrollment would create more choices, but the most revered schools are already over-booked. Florida Times Union.

Charter schools. A collaboration between a charter school and a private college blurs lines between K-12 and higher education, and raises questions among Miami-Dade school district officials, the Miami Herald reports. Orange County school district officials want to take one charter school’s application appeal before a judge, but construction has already begun. Orlando Sentinel. Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, questions state funding intended to help SEED open one of its boarding schools in Miami-Dade. WFSU.

Common Core. A new Achieve survey probes public opinion on the standards. Sentinel School Zone flags one major finding: Most people still say they know little about them. The standards have become an issue in a Republican congressional primary involving state Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, the Fort Myers News-Press reports.

School choice. A raft of legislation, from charter schools to education savings accounts, is proving controversial this legislative session. Miami Herald.